Category Archives: Education

Chicago “Joint Readiness Summit” This Fri 2/4 – Small Biz Funding Opportunities

From Chicago Business Affairs & Consumer Protection

JOINT READINESS SUMMIT: This Friday, February 4 from 9:00AM to 4:00PM

Join the City of Chicago, Cook County, and State of Illinois leaders as well as other experts to learn about what it takes to be “ready” to apply for grants and contracts funded by American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and other economic recovery funding streams.

This event will take place via Zoom and will be simultaneously streamed on YouTube. Meeting information will be sent via email prior to the event. ASL interpretation and closed captioning will be provided.

Learn about the Chicago Recovery Plan — the City’s plan to amplify once-in-a-generation federal funding to create an equity-based investment strategy to catalyze a sustainable economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding under the Chicago Recovery Plan, which includes funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and over $600 million in local bond funds, is allocated alongside all other available resources in the City budget to maximize this opportunity over the next 3-5 year funding period. The initiatives and strategic priorities that make up the Chicago Recovery Plan were a result of several stages of community engagement and input during the 2022 budget development process.  The list of current funding opportunities can be found here:
Funding Opportunities (chicago.gov)

Register by visiting the Joint Readiness Summit Registration Webpage.


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

How To Make IL Dept Of Rev (IDOR) Business Tax Payments Online: Estimates & Extensions – UPDATED

The step-by-step instructions I painstakingly wrote up earlier this year for making business replacement income tax estimated and extension payments are now out-of-date, because IDOR revamped their MyTaxIllinois website in September (grrrrr). So here are the basic instructions (screenshots are coming soon, but this will have to do for now):

— Log into the business’s My Tax IL account
— On the ‘Summary’ tab, look for the ‘Business Income Tax’ section
— Click on the link for ‘View more account options’

There are two ways to do it from here; the first is:
— In the ‘Account Options’ section, click the link for ‘Make An Estimated Payment’
— Select the period you want to pay (which is 12/31/2021 for tax year 2021 — choose a later period if paying estimated taxes for 2022)
— Click the first ‘Add Payment’ hyperlink in the Payment Schedule table for each payment you would like to schedule.
— If your payment information is saved in MyTax Illinois, then in the ‘Choose’ tab you can select the dropdown under ‘Payment Channel’
— Otherwise, select ‘New’ and enter your company bank info.
— In either case, on the right where it says ‘Payment’, you can change the payment’s debit date and enter the amount.
— Click Submit, and re-enter your password for security purposes

Alternatively:
— In the ‘Periods and Submissions’ section, click the link for ‘View Account Periods’
— Click the 12/31/2021 link so that your payment is applied to tax year 2021 (or a later period if paying 2022 estimated quarterly taxes)
— In the upper right corner of this page, click the ‘Make A Payment’ link
— Select the ‘Bank Account Debit’ link
— Click the IL-1120-ST Payment link (ST denotes a “Small Business” payment)
— Enter the amount you want to pay in the Amount and Confirm Amount fields
— Click Submit, and re-enter your password for security purposes

Congrats, you did it!


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Tips & Tricks for Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) Year-End Reporting

With one week left before year-end, it’s possible that you are among the folks who received an email (below) back in October but hasn’t yet reported to the SBA on the eligible expenses incurred so far. This blog post (with a 20-min video walking you through the whole process) is our suggestion of how to translate the info you already have in QuickBooks into a format that will easily conform to the Restaurant Revitalization Award Portal requirements.

Sample email from SBA regarding RRF year-end reporting.

Spoiler alert: the process takes more than 5 minutes. It can easily take an hour or more. The actual entering of data into the SBA RRF portal is the part that only takes 5 or so minutes.

Our recommendation is to download the free Restaurant Revitalization Fund Tracker from the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) website (like their PPP Forgiveness Calculator, you do have to register for an account, but there’s no charge). However, instead of entering each individual transaction on the form (as it’s designed for you to do), our suggested shortcut is to take the information you already have in your QuickBooks file and enter each category as one line — then subtract all the non-RRF grants and assistance received, so that you’re not double-dipping.

The RRF period runs from February 15, 2020 — the very beginning of the pandemic — to March 11, 2023. The year-end reporting is just a progress report of what you’ve spent so far that is eligible for RRF program fund allocation. So we suggest you run a Profit & Loss for your company for the period of February 15, 2020 all the way through November 30, 2021 (or whatever your most recently reconciled month-end is), and use those numbers to report what has been spent so far. Then enter the non-RRF grant funds as negative numbers on the same Expense Tracker tab, so that they net against each other. The result will be the data you submit to the SBA at restaurants.sba.gov once you log in to your portal.

I’ve recorded a video illustrating the whole process — but in case you want a follow-along checklist, here it is:

Step 1 – download the AICPA RRF Tracking Tool
Step 2 – enter the name of your company in the Summary tab, cell A9
Step 3 – enter the RRF amount in the Expense Tracker tab, cell C6
Step 4 – run your Profit & Loss from 2/15/2020-11/20/2021
Step 5 – export to Excel and save to your RRF file folder
Step 6 – on the Expense Tracker tab, enter summary amounts from the Profit & Loss for Payroll, Rent, Utilities, Food & Beverage, Maintenance, Supplies, Covered Supplier Costs, and Business Operations Expenses

Tip: for now, skip Mortgage Payments, Debt Service, Outdoor Seating Construction, and Depreciation, or ask your accountant for help with these, as they are usually on the Balance Sheet or in the Non-Operating Expense section of the Profit & Loss, and are therefore harder to DIY.

Tip: Business Operations Expenses are all operating expenses that are not already accounted for in one of the other categories.

Step 7 – IMPORTANT: enter all the non-RRF grants and financial assistance as negative amounts on the Expense Tracker tab — this is to prevent any double-dipping
Step 8 – go to restaurants.sba.gov and log in
Step 9 – enter your name, address, EIN, phone, and email (if this information is not already there)
Step 10 – enter the amounts from the Summary tab — Note: you cannot enter more than the total RRF grant, so you may need to reduce one or more of the categories so that you don’t exceed the total.
Step 11 – if you have allocated all the RRF funds, certify as such — you will not be required to repeat this progress report next year; if you have not allocated all the RRF funds, you will be able to “Save” but not “Submit”.

If you have not allocated all the funds yet, then follow this same process next year by December 31, 2022 — you can run the Profit & Loss from 12/1/2021-11/30/2022 at that point and follow the same approach. Most folks will have sufficient eligible expenses from 2/15/2020-11/30/2021 to “use up” the whole RRF grant, but after subtracting other grant income from expenses, may find that they still have a balance left over that they can allocate costs to when reporting at the end of 2022.

You have until March 11, 2023 to allocate all the funds (aka spend them on operating expenses, and until April 30, 2023 for final reporting. If it turns out you didn’t have enough eligible expenses from 2/15/20-11/30/21 using Profit & Loss Operating Expenses, then take some time to work with your accountant to determine if you have debt service, mortgage payments, capital expenses for outdoor seating, or depreciation that counts. You can report these in next year’s RRF Program Post-Award Report, along with next year’s Profit & Loss Operating Expenses. In all cases: make sure to subtract all other grant income from expenses so you are not double-dipping!

23-minute video walking you through the whole process — Merry Christmas!

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Year-End IDES Unemployment Rate Notices for Employers – How To Update In Gusto Payroll

IDES taking steps to address unprecedented volume of unemployment claims |  News | metropolisplanet.com

Most states, including Illinois, send out a letter at the end of each year to employers, informing them of their new “Contribution Rate Determination”. As I’m receiving lots of questions about them this year, I figured I’d take a moment to explain what these are and how to update your Gusto payroll account with this info.

This year, IDES is distributing the letter electronically for all who have opted in, with an email stating:

You have received new electronic correspondence from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES). Please log into MyTax Illinois to view your correspondence as some may require a timely response. Below is a list of the new correspondence you have received.

  • Contribution Rate Determination (Mail Date: 11/30/2021)

If the notice you received has appeals rights, you must file your appeal according to the instructions stated on the notice. If you have questions, please call the IDES Employer Services Hotline: 800-247-4984.

For those who haven’t received a letter in the mail, you’ll want to log into MyTax Illinois to get your letter (or if you did get your letter in the mail, but want to download a pdf of it for your files).

Once you log into your company’s MyTax Illinois account (the same place you log into to make sales tax and corporate estimated tax payments), you’ll see a number next to the “Action Center”. Click on that and then click on the “View Letters” link.

Then click on the “View Letters” link.

And then click on the “Contribution Rate Determination” link to get your letter.

The letter will say “Rate Determination” at the top-left.

The new rate is listed at the end of the first row on the page, under where it says “Contribution Rate (New)”.

This rate is also known as your “experience rating” because it’s in part based on how many of your employees claimed unemployment over the past two years, compared with the total payroll for that same time period. (For 2020 and most of 2021 they paused this type of increase, because everyone was claiming unemployment due to the pandemic.) For 2021, the percentage will be between 0.200% and 7.625%.

You can see a list of the historical rates by year here: Annual Employer Contribution Tax Rates (illinois.gov)

If for some reason the wages, unemployment benefit claims, and rate don’t seem right, the next page in the letter allows you to contest it by sharing how your company records are different. The following page in the letter explains how the formula works, in case you’re not sure whether or not it deserves contesting.

Contesting a rate is rarely needed for small business owners, because we all have the option to contest individual claims when they happen. If a staff member quits/resigns, or if they are fired for dangerous behavior, then they don’t qualify to claim unemployment benefits — a notice for each claim is sent to the business owner and they have a short period in which they can dispute the claim. It’s important to do this to keep the IDES contribution rate down. Keep in mind that just this past year, they have stopped mailing claim letters, and business owners should check their MyTax Illinois account each month for these notices — see my blog post here for more: Illinois – No More Snail Mail for Unemployment Claim Notifications | The Dancing Accountant

In November, IDES sent out another round of reminders about this:

And on the final page they included an option to request a snail-mailed paper notification of claims:

So you’ve got your new rate — what does it mean and what should you do with it?

The rate will be multiplied against the first $12,960 of each employee’s wages (this increases slightly each year) and the resulting total will be paid as unemployment tax by the employer. That’s why you want as low a rate as possible. But if you don’t have a lot of employees, then even a high rate does not end up being a lot of money. Pretty amazing deal for how much our society depends on the unemployment safety net.

Provide the notice to your payroll provider to get the rate entered into your payroll system, or if you use Gusto, just update the rate yourself — it’s very easy, and this way you know it gets done! Log into Gusto and:

  1. Click the Taxes & compliance section and select Tax setup.
  2. Click Manage Taxes under the applicable State Tax section.
  3. Scroll to “State Tax Settings” and click edit next to SUI Rate.

The effective date for the new rate is the upcoming January 1st.

If you don’t update your payroll records asap, then you could end up paying in unemployment at a higher or lower rate than required. If it’s too low, you may end up owing penalties, and if it’s too high, then you have to file for a refund, which a lot of folks forget to do, leaving their money on the table in perpetuity.

One more reminder: anyone who received unemployment benefits in 2021 will be getting a 1099-G in January noting those amounts for tax purposes — see my blog post about this from last year here: Illinois IDES 1099-G Form For 2020 Unemployment: What You Need To Know | The Dancing Accountant


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Dec 7 Webinar: Common Fraud Schemes Facing Small Businesses

Event Image

Just wanted to share an upcoming webinar I’ll be attending — it’s free to NSAC members and $56 for non-members.

With the pandemic challenging traditional business processes and procedures, companies and their management are having to adapt to more electronic processes and different forms of communication. Fraudsters are mirroring these adaptations with ways of getting business information and how they execute their fraud schemes. We’ll discuss the most relevant fraud schemes affecting small businesses in this new business environment.

Presenter and Moderator Bios

Jessica Yohe, CPA, CFE, Bauknight Pietras & Stormer
Jessica is an audit supervisor at Bauknight Pietras and Stormer, P.A. (“BPS”) where she provides leadership to the teams she works with and maintains strong client communications. Jessica serves clients across multiple industries including telecommunications, manufacturing, distribution, property and casualty insurance, and fraud/forensic engagements. During her time at BPS, Jessica has taught continuing education seminars on topics such as Fraud Considerations for Auditors, Audit Considerations for Investments, and Audit Considerations in the Wake of COVID19.

Bill Erlenbush, CPA, NSAC Director of Education
Bill Erlenbush spent his entire career working in cooperative accounting at GROWMARK. His work experience includes all aspects of order control and billing, accounts receivable/payable, financial accounting, and tax. As compliance officer, he had responsibility for the administration of the compliance and ethics program at GROWMARK and its subsidiaries and retail divisions. In addition, he was been involved in negotiating major acquisitions for GROWMARK. His educational background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Accountancy from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Illinois State University. He is a Certified Public Accountant. Bill is an active member in many industry, professional, and community organizations. He is past president of the Mclean County United Way Board of Directors as well as the past president of the Heartland Community College Foundation Board of Directors.

Cost
Free for NSAC Members / $56.00 for Non-Members

Register here — Common Fraud Schemes Facing Small Businesses Today – NSAC Cooperative Learning Network (nsacoop.org)


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Covid-19 Relief Program Updates and Q&A Webinar

COVID Relief Program Updates and Q&A – Wegner CPAs

My excellent colleagues over at Wegner CPAs are providing yet another free webinar on the remaining Covid-19 relief programs for small business owners.

Do you still have questions about the COVID relief programs? Join us for an overview of what’s available and learn about any updates to the:

  • Paycheck Protection Program
  • Employee Retention Credit
  • Economic Injury Disaster Loan Advance Program
  • Shuttered Venue Operators Grant
  • Restaurant Revitalization Fund Program

Please indicate questions you have about these programs during registration so they can be addressed in the presentation. Time will also be available for live Q&A.

Presented by:

Kate Serpe, CPA, Senior Manager, joined Wegner CPAs as an intern in 2010 and was hired full-time as part of the Accounting Solutions Group in 2011. Kate has experience providing controllership and CFO services to cooperatives and not for profit organizations and specializes in board presentations and assisting clients with strategic planning.

Dan Bergs, CPA, Senior Manager, joined Wegner CPAs as an intern in 2008 and started full-time after graduation in 2010. He specializes in working individual and business clients providing them with a variety of tax and accounting services.


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Chi Biz Strong and Outdoor Dining Grants

From https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/chi-biz-strong-grants/home.html

The City of Chicago just opened two new grant programs: Chi Biz Strong and Outdoor Dining. These programs are extremely straightforward, easy to understand and apply for, and are funded with over $20M. To streamline the process for applicants, the Chi Biz Strong Grants and Outdoor Dining Grant Program will be available through a single application.

Applications are available now and will be open until Friday, November 12, 2021 at 11:59 pm. Grants will be disbursed via a lottery and based on eligibility and prioritization criteria. To apply and learn more, please visit Chicago.gov/ChiBizStrongGrant.

I attended today’s webinar by Allies for Community Business — formerly Accion — and they did a great job presenting the basics and answering questions. If you have questions about the program, I strongly recommend attending one of the webinars or watching today’s recording, soon to be posted on the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection’s YouTube page.

Program Overview:

  • Chi Biz Strong Grant Program: $5,000 or $10,000 grants (based on 2020 revenue reported on tax return) to small businesses and nonprofit organizations that have experienced lost revenue or increased costs due to COVID-19 to support business/nonprofit expenses
  • Outdoor Dining Grant Program: $5,000 grants for small restaurants and bars to support the purchase (or reimbursement) of outdoor furniture, pandemic-related signage, and personal protective equipment
  • Eligible organizations must have under $3M in revenue, and organizations that have not received prior government pandemic relief will be prioritized
  • Applicants will be selected by criteria and lottery; how soon you submit your application will have no impact on your likelihood to receive an award, as long as it is submitted prior to the deadline
  • Applications are open through Friday, November 12, 2021, at 11:59 PM.

Here are the details for for-profit companies (the rules for non-profits are different, so I encourage you to watch the webinar specifically for NFPs if this applies to you):

For-profit business criteria:

  • Small businesses (under $3M in revenue)
  • If you have over $60k of 2020 revenue reported on your tax return, Chi Biz will be a $10k flat grant — versus under $60k in revenue, it will be a $5k flat grant; unlike prior programs, it is not an amount based on a decline in revenue
  • Outdoor Dining is a $5k flat grant — you can apply for both Chi Biz and Outdoor Dining on the same application
  • Businesses who started in 2020 may be eligible, presuming they meet the qualifications otherwise
  • 50% of funding will be prioritized for businesses in Low and Moderate Income (LMI) communities and 50% to other geographies
  • Excludes certain business types, such as junk yards and pawn shops
  • Businesses that have not received prior State, Federal or local government aid or financial relief will be prioritized
  • Small chains and franchises are eligible below a certain size; see FAQ for details

Required Documents (For-Profit Businesses)

  • Business Owner Valid ID (driver’s license, State ID, Passport, Consular Registration Card)
  • City/State business license with Chicago business address OR other proof of Chicago address (e.g. business bank statement or tax statement with business name and Chicago address). For Outdoor Dining Grant Program, City business license is required.
  • 2020 Federal Business Tax Return all pages (Form 1120, 1065, 990 OR Form 1040 w/ Schedule C)
  • Most recent business bank statement
  • W9 Form

Timeline

  • 10/22: Grant application is available
  • 11/12: Grant application closes at 12:59 p.m. CDT
  • By third week of December: Grant recipients are chosen via lottery and notified of their acceptance

An excerpt of slides from today’s webinar:

For more information, webinar registration, and the application, please visit https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/chi-biz-strong-grants/home.html.


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Upcoming NSAC Webinars For Small Biz & Co-op Accountants

I get a great deal of value from my annual membership with the National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives, and one of the most valuable benefits is free access to their Cooperative Learning Network — “webinars that provide easy access to presentations, panel discussions and conversations by leading experts and fellow members on a variety of topics and issues important to those in the cooperative world”. (I would argue that any small business consultant will get great value from these — not just those who work with co-ops.) However, you can take these classes as a non-member as well, for a small fee (usually $56), which includes CPE credit. They are usually well worth it, as there are some topics that they cover, such as small business fraud and preparing for a third-party audit, that no other accounting/bookkeeping membership organization seems to do quite as well.

I mention this because they have a great line-up of CLNs in the next few months and I wanted to highlight some of them:

More information here:
https://nsacoop.org/events/financial-forecasting

More information here:
https://nsacoop.org/events/inside-mind-auditor

More information here:
https://nsacoop.org/events/common-fraud-schemes-facing-small-businesses-today

For those out there considering expanding your scope to include cooperatives, I strongly encourage it, as there are simply not enough co-op bookkeepers and accountants out there to fill the need; cooperatives are one of the fastest-growing segments of the small business population and we need your help to keep them on solid financial footing. NSAC offers Basic and Advanced Cooperative Accounting Seminars — training in the core concepts unique to working for or with cooperatives such as equity management, tax planning and risk management.

I’ll be attending all three of the above webinars and hope to “see” you there!


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

How To Apply for PPP Forgiveness (Loans $150K Or Less; No Employees) Using Biz2Credit

Screenshot from Biz2Credit forgiveness process.

Note: this is an update to an existing blog post — the instructions below are specific to the Biz2Credit PPP lending platform. If you received your loan through another platform, please see my original post.

For over a year we waited for legislation from Congress as well as guidance from both the SBA and IRS as to the interplay between the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). It appears the last of that guidance was issued on August 10, 2021 — so, at this point, as long as you have worked out the interplay between PPP and the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), then you should go ahead and apply. Which means that if you are a sole proprietor and have no employees, you are ready to apply — since ERC is only an issue if you have W-2 employees or are a W-2 employee of your own company.

For PPP draws in 2021, our firm participated in a joint program by AICPA and Biz2Credit called the “CPA Loan Portal”. We’ve prepared the following step-by-step instructions for clients of ours who were funded through this system — however, I believe the instructions are the same for small business owners who applied directly with Biz2Credit. (Let us know in the comments if this is the case or if you had to tweak the approach at all.)

First, a couple general comments for borrowers of $150k or less who are self-employed with no employees:

  • For self-employed with no employees, it’s an “owner compensation replacement” approach, which means you will have 2.5 months’ worth of your prior-year net profit (or gross profit, for those who applied for PPP funding under the last-minute changes to the rules) automatically forgiven. Your forgiveness amount should exactly equal your loan amount, presuming the original loan was calculated properly.
  • According to Biz2Credit on their July 1 webinar (from their PPP Forgiveness Required Documents Customer Guidebook), no documentation is required for sole proprietors with loans of $150k or less:

How-To Instructions for PPP Forgiveness – AICPA Biz2Credit Application – Self-Employed with No Employees

First things first, decide whether you’d like to fill out the forgiveness application yourself or whether you’d like your CPA firm to do it for you for a small fee. Once you’ve informed them that you’d like to DIY, they will need to “assign” the forgiveness application to you, which will trigger an email that looks something like this:

Once you log in to your account using the credentials you created when you signed the PPP draw application just before getting funded, you’ll be walked through a series of screens.

Click the “Apply for Loan Forgiveness” button.

Most of the information will be automatically filled in based on the initial loan application information. There is no need to enter information in any of the fields marked “(Optional)”. Click the “Confirm” button.

A pop-up should suggest you use the 3508-S application, the simplest one – click the Continue button to go to the Basic PPP Loan Information screen.

Covered Period Start Date should default to the disbursement date as the start date. The duration of the covered period can be anywhere from 8-to-24 weeks; if the applicant is self-employed with no employees, we suggest a 10-week period. The end-date will auto-fill.

Most of the information will fill in automatically, but you will have to note the number of employees at the time of the forgiveness application – for self-employed with no employees, the answer is 1.

For a self-employed person with no employees, the Amount of Loan Spent on Payroll Costs should be the full amount of the PPP loan.

Click the green “Next” button on the lower-right corner to continue.

A pop-up will come up – read and click “Accept & Continue” if you agree.

You should get a screen confirming the form was completed and letting you know they have sent an email with a link to Docusign the application. Do not click the “Continue” button until you sign the application. Open your email program in a separate tab to find the email from Biz2Credit Contract Support via Docusign, with the subject, “Biz2Credit : PPP Loan Forgiveness Application Form 3508S”. Keep in mind that it may be in the “Promotions” or “Updates” tab, or in Spam.

Click the orange “Review Document” button in the email.

The Docusign document should open in a separate tab – you may need to allow it to access your location.

Checkmark the agreement and click “Continue”.

Click the “Start” button and follow the guidelines to initial twice and then sign the form. Click the “Finish” button when you are done. Save a copy for your own records.

Go back to the Biz2Credit tab and click “Continue” (if you accidentally closed the tab, please go to the Biz2Credit site and log in again). It is essential that you click the “Continue” button to submit the application.

Click “Ok” on the pop-up. This will take you back to the dashboard – at the bottom, instead of the “Apply for Loan Forgiveness” button, you should see two links: View Submission and View Documents. There is no need to click on these at this point, but seeing them is reassurance that your application has in fact been submitted.

(If you did not download the form after Docusigning, then you can do it at this point, by clicking “View Documents”. It will then take you to a screen with a long list of possible documents – the top link (“E-signed 3508”) allows you to download a pdf of the e-signed document for your records.)

You will receive two more emails from Biz2Credit: 1) an email via Docusign allowing you to view or download the completed document (which at this point you’ve already done); and, 2) a confirmation that your loan forgiveness application is being sent to the SBA.

Now sit tight and await a confirmation email from Biz2Credit once the SBA has forgiven the loan – please make sure to forward this to your CPA firm… and congratulations!

Note: Even though no documentation for loans under $150k is required, occasionally there will be a follow-up email from Biz2Credit requesting certain items. Please forward to your CPA firm if this occurs and they will advise (and they’ll inform your Biz2Credit lending rep that this step should not be required).

For self-employed folks with no employees, the PPP Forgiveness process is very straightforward. Please let us know in the comments if you come across challenges, so others can learn from your experiences — especially for those who applied directly with Biz2Credit instead of through your CPA. Best of luck to you all!


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

IRS Finally Issues Guidance On Employee Retention Credit (ERC)

It finally happened… the IRS released long-awaited guidance on the Employee Retention Credit (ERC):
• August 4 – Notice 2021-49 and accompanying IR-2021-165
• August 10 – Rev. Proc. 2021-33

Some major questions were answered:
• Whether wages of more than 50% shareholders and their spouses are considered qualified wages for the purpose of the credit.
(Mostly “no”, unless you’re an orphan with no living siblings or kids. Much frustration abounds — more on this later.)
• Whether cash tips are included in qualified wages.
(Yes. Good news!)
• Whether full-time employees or full-time equivalent employees should be used to calculate the number of employees to determine whether a business is a small or large eligible employer.
(Head-count, not FTEs. Good news again!)
• Timing of the wage deduction disallowance.
(Must be on 2020 tax return, so amend if already filed.)
• Does gross receipts for ERC include PPP, SVOG, RRF?
(Mostly “no”, as long as you treat them consistently. More good news!)

They also released rules on changes made to the ERC by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) regarding:
• Recovery Start-up Business
• Severely Financially Distressed Employer

There were other significant updates to the ERC as well, including clarifications as to:
• If an employer may claim both the ERC and the Internal Revenue Code Section 45B “Tip Tax Credit” that applies to food and beverage workers.
(YES! You can double-dip. Truly shocking, and good news.)
• Instructions on amending filed income tax returns returns after receiving the ERC.

Thankfully, the AICPA shared numerous resources on these in this week’s Town Hall — I strongly recommend viewing the AICPA TV session called “Employee Retention Credit: Your Questions Answered”. In this video, Kristin Esposito and April Walker review the IRS notice and explain guidance on the common questions listed above.

Additionally, AICPA released two Tax Adviser Articles:
Guidance on claiming ERC
New safe harbor for ERC gross receipts calculation

They are also putting together a panel of practitioners for a September Town Hall, to discuss how each is dealing with client returns based on this new guidance.

In addition to all the AICPA goodies, our go-to legal resource, Alan Gassman and Brandon Ketron recorded a “PPP and ERC Update” video on August 7th that explores (and vents) Notice 2021-49 (it was recorded prior to Rev. Proc 2021-33, so there’s no reference to the fact that PPP, SVOG, and RRF receipts are not included in gross income for ERC qualification purposes).

Which is a good segue to circle back to the frustration derived from the IRS’s “letter of the law” guidance. The basic idea is that if owners have any living relatives (regardless of association with the business), their wages do not qualify for ERC — but those of an orphan with no siblings or offspring would. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go over well in the accounting and legal communities:

NCCPAP blasts IRS guidance on Employee Retention Credit | Accounting Today

Newly Issued Employee Retention Credit Guidance Punishes Owner Employees If They Have Living Family Members | Forbes

Practitioners call for fixes to the Employee Retention Credit | Accounting Today

IRS Issues Additional Guidance for Claiming the Employee Retention Tax Credit | Gould & Ratner LLP – JDSupra

I suspect the IRS is attempting to force Congress’s hand by taking the sloppily-written legislation at face value and therefore releasing a ridiculous literal interpretation they know could not have been intended. But without sufficient administrative authority to read their own preferences into it, the IRS has now put Congress in a position to have to release new legislation to explicitly spell out their original intent. Will this happen anytime soon? Do we hold off on filing client 941-X returns in the meantime? Or is Congress too busy to right this wrong?

We’ll be mulling these questions over in the next few weeks, with the intention of making a game-time call with enough time to get our September 15th extended business tax returns filed.


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